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From: m043210@muvms3.bitnet (B MOORE)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: Telepathy/NOT neural nets
Message-ID: <14938@muvms3.bitnet>
Date: 21 Mar 90 14:33:43 GMT
References: <68407@aerospace.AERO.ORG> <5445@okstate.UUCP> <2984@umbc3.UMBC.EDU>
Followup-To: comp.ai.neural-nets
Organization: Marshall University
Lines: 52

In article <2984@umbc3.UMBC.EDU>, bruce@menkar.gsfc.nasa.gov (Bruce Mount 572-8408) writes:
> Mike Plonski writes:
> 
>>I don't know exactly what you mean by "telepathy", but I hope that we
>>are talking real science here and not science fiction.  I assume what 
>>you mean is more related to bio-feedback types of systems.
> 
> I am not familiar with the Japanese research mentioned in previous
> postings.  However, Dr. Robert G. Jahn and Brenda J. Dunne have written
> a facinating *HARD* *SCIENCE* book on various ESP findings.  The book is:
> 
>    "Margins of Reality, The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World"
>                                 by
>                Robert G. Jahn and Brenda J. Dunne
>                Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987
> 
> 
> Dr. Jahn is a Professor of Aerospace Sciences and Dean Emeritus of the
> school of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Princeton University.  Brenda
> Dunne is manager of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab.

> [Fifteen or so lines deleted]
 
> Good reading to all,
> 
> --Bruce
>   bruce@atria.gsfc.nasa.gov
> 
> =================================================
> | Bruce Mount                 "Brevity is best" |
> | bruce@atria.gsfc.nasa.gov                     |
> =================================================
With the caveat that I have *not* read these gentlemen's work, nor have I
met them, I do have the following reservation about the information presented.

Neither of the persons mentioned appear, from the information presented, to
be trained in research methods in the behavioral sciences.  Frequently, when
workers from a different field set out to do what is essentially behavioral
science, they fail to employ proper control techniques, or to use proper
experimental procedures.  For example, it is necessary to control for things
such as demand characteristics, subject and/or experimenter knowledge of
tratment condition, inadvertent cuing of the subject and other such sources
of confounding.  In ESP research, positive results are often observed to
vanish when proper control procedures are employed.  Of course, this applies
to behavioral research in general.  While I do not know whether or not this
is the case here, until I had some information about the way in which the
data was obtained, I would be extremely wary of accepting the results at 
face value.

B. Moore
Dept. of Psychology
Marshall Univ.